Sponsor little Jobe and help support the essential support services...

Please sponsor Christine's walk for Jove - if we all donate even the smallest amount we could help to spread the Light - and Luck... Click Here for Christine's sponsor form. All the assumptions that we naively make about our luck are all relative. If we feel lucky, we feel alive and loved and blessed and just all-round warm and good. We feel wonderful. My daughter-in-law and 3 of my beautiful grandchildren (on the left) are walking in this year's 'Light The Night' walk (for the 4th year running) for leukemia and blood disorders for little Jove (on the right). Ironically, Jove's mom, Iris, walked in Light The Night too - before Jove was even born... My hope is that if we all pitch in and sponsor her - and little Jove - he and hundreds of other precious children like him will be a little bit luckier. Click Here for Christine's sponsor form and more information about the walk - we'll be there and we would love for you to join us too!

Degrees of Luck

Luck is a funny thing... One man's luck is another man's nemesis. If you are in a coma, then 'luck' is to recover consciousness. If you are a well known film star, luck is to land that best-ever role. If you're a teenager without wheels, luck is to win even an old car. If you already have a car, then luck is to win a year's worth of gas and new brakes...

And so on.

The last few weeks have been strange... A brilliant friend of mine was diagnosed years ago with diabetes. He is a gifted stock trader and hopeless entrepreneur. A few years ago one of his legs was black and rotten from the knee down and, despite his doctor's advice to have the leg amputated below the knee, he dived long and hard breathing pure oxygen at the Hyperbaric Oxygen Centre until his leg was pink and healthy again. This last couple of years he's been working long hours and his foot and leg became gangrenous again. He feels lucky that the hospital only had to amputate part of his leg last week and he is learning to walk again already...

NAIG - North American Indigenous Games A day of joy...

We need more joy in this world...

Lives are broken and smashed by trauma - racial, physical, emotional...

This day was a celebration of success...

The North American Indigenous culture was suddenly traumatized - much like an individual who suffers a stroke or serious injury - when the European settlers landed on these shores. As ReBuilding is where my mind is these days, I was obsessing about the similarities between trauma to an individual and trauma to a whole Nation...



This was a day for the First Nations... No mistake. A real celebration. It was also wonderful inspiration to all those who have suffered severe trauma of all kinds...








I've never seen so much hi-fiving in all my life!...







I felt gratitude, being able to applaud strong, young athletes... Taking over my generation's struggles 'to overcome' the past, with new energy and in such positive ways. They do it with apparent ease and grace...






Tribal journeys - which is a fantastic 'Outward Bound' kind of program that takes an active approach in attending to internal problems within the family/culture - had taken place all week with longboats arriving in Cowichan Bay from all over North America and Canada...


I was hoping and praying that the crowds would turn out for the celebrations planned for Sunday. As a Caucasian who is anything but comfortable with her race's history, I want so badly to create new history - a fabulous 'today' - founded on unity and hope and goodwill.

As it happened, thousands of people turned out on this hot, sunny day to cheer the four-and-a-half THOUSAND athletes in the North American Indigenous Games - teams from Alberta and Arizona to New York and Nova Scotia...



I was delighted! The choir that I sing with, One Human Family Gospel Choir, were there, helping to line the route. Here our director Eric (below), is being shaded with a parasol...





Along with the thousands of participants and spectators was a craft fair...

Again and again I saw a lovely blend of tradition, present and future.


This was a mom-and-daughter business making herbal creams in the traditional ways but marketing them in today's way - on the internet...


TheHul'qumi'num group was there promoting education about this land and its First Nations and history.

Representatives from the police force, Canadian Forces and Government offices were recruiting and a great example, to me, of the old and the new in perfect harmony was a beautiful 'today' black silk business-woman's suit with traditional First Nations markings...

The best story of all I discovered on Saturday...

A handful of experienced security men and women have been volunteering their services for First Nations events - including this one...


Supported by local business interests, these guys had been training with First Nations people to provide their Morning Star security for all their events.

They were delighted to show off the beautiful thank you gift that they'd received for all their hard work - and fondly remembered their founder, Lumpy Joe.


To me it was one more example of a community ReBuilding - taking the present and creating the future...

Real and respectful co-operation between people of all cultures.
The feeling of unity and love and an accepting generosity... (I appreciate this, even though the injury to the First Nations people was years before my birth)

I believe the secret of the future lies in unity...

As the great example we were shown here, we can learn from and respect history, seize today and embrace a new future... I pray that the future-builders - our sons and daughters - will be much wiser than our ancestors were and forge the future in peace.

ReBuilders must do the same thing...

I hope the day will come soon when there will be unity in the world: complete harmony, equality and acceptance between men and women of all colours and faiths and histories.

I keep finding examples of this these days - there's a feeling of goodwill and it's spreading!

Whirlwind of action

Wow! It's been nearly a month since I last posted... My goal was to post at least weekly?! I am so caught up (and still learning) in getting this website 'right' and launched, that I've been living and dreaming it. I could blame my brain injury for making it too easy to 'tangle everything up' - and then I find out from my brilliant friend Ann Handley's post that my fears are really no different from everyone else's... Yay!!

My dream is to have a website that will help give back control of your own life after trauma; a website that will provide a community for those recovering; a dating site that is gentler and a bit more subtle than some; a fantastic directory that gives not only the names and addresses of therapists but also provides details of the types of therapy that they do together with a few words about them personally and perhaps even a testimonial; articles sharing the latest news and developments in rehab; stories from alumni (all of us?) about our traumas so that no-one ever need feel alone again...

I almost always wake up before the end of my dreams - they're a bit long! To have a chance at success, I really need a lot of help to 'get out there' and known about. Which I'm sure will come when it's ready...

But back to 'now'... The big event in the last month was a fabulous conference in Dallas, Texas for eWomenNetwork where an unimaginable 3000 - yes, three thousand! - entrepreneurial women met and shared and networked and supported each other with their businesses. What power we have...

On these beautiful days I am torn by the desire to just 'enjoy some summer' and sit under the oak tree outside with some lemonade! My son - who provides ReBuildingYou with it's IT - now has his first car with sleek rims and throbbing stereo and has discovered tubing in local rivers and partying on some of our beautiful beaches... So much for quick progress for the website!

But you know what? It's all just the way it is meant to be... Without a healthy dose of JOY, progress - whether with a website, business or rehabilitation - will come to a standstill or at least be slow. I forget sometimes to 'take my own medicine' and balance the Physical, Emotional, Joy, Cognitive and Financial colours of life...

So here's hoping that the summer will soak into your bones and that you can take a few moments to feel the warmth of the sun on your face. In the long run, better and more lasting progress will be ours!

With a warm hug...

To Your Good Health, Adele...

This week I said goodbye (hopefully just 'adieu') to the doctor who made the single biggest difference in my post-TBI life: Adele Hern. Adele was my neuropsychologist (hard to say 'was'...) and she was the first person - one of the very few - who truly understands what my post-TBI brain is like.

Most people assume that because I look fine, I am. Which is great and I appreciate the vote of confidence. Mostly...

But if I try to explain how life really is for me, people look at me strangely, as if they're trying to read between my words and find the joke or the catch. Then they tell me how everyone forgets things, especially them, and they tell me how lucky I am. It drives me crazy! I've never wanted other than to be as I was. Sometimes I need to reach out and tell someone how it is for me. Often they can't hear and mostly that's OK. Until Adele, I felt very alone.

Adele is an incredible woman and doctor. She has an uncanny knack of understanding exactly what's happening inside the neurologically damaged head, giving you back a priceless sense of belonging. Which is something I had long since given up on when I met her. What's more, I know that she has been able to give this same, amazing gift to many others.

The invisibly disabled often go through life being misunderstood and mistrusted - and generally squinted at - as if they're 'pulling a fast one'. For me, I eventually started to believe 'them' and mistrusted my own instincts...

Adele Hern gave me back 'myself'. One of the most precious gifts a person could receive.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Adele.

Meanwhile, enjoy sunsets on a beautiful beach (my idea of heaven!) with a Pina Colada and your husband close by your side.

With much love,
Julie

ps... If ever you find yourself at a loose end and tempted to 'come back' - even for a brief moment, please call me. I would love the opportunity to share ReBuildingYou with you in some way...

Collective Energy

One of my 'best things' to do is sing with the One Human Family Gospel Choir . On Saturday night we performed at a beautiful old stone church - with lovely stained glass windows - called the Peace Centre. And it was full to bursting!

To be a part of a beautiful collective voice never ceases to fill my heart - and cover me with goose bumps. Alone my singing is pretty ordinary and it's a real challenge (after ABI) to sing in tune, remember the notes and the words and the timing, stand for a couple of hours, clap, dance, smile... I worry every time that I won't be able to do it.

But after the first few bars of music, energy from the whole choir runs through me. I am transcended somewhere special and for those precious hours I am no longer confined by my abilities alone or by my body. Alone, my voice was broken. Yet with some practice and as part of this incredible choir I am whole again - at least for that time. I am grateful for such an amazing gift.

It wasn't always this way. As a young girl I sang with my school choir and even sang one of the solo parts of Silent Night at Christchurch in England. Then my head injury damaged the part of the brain that governs the voice (along with many other parts) and I could never guarantee or control my pitch or tone - even in speech. I was sad to think that I would ever sing again...

My lovely friend Carolyn encouraged me for 2 whole years to join her choir - and when I eventually went, she was away! That first night I was terrified. Another good friend, Dominic, accompanied me and I tried several sections of the choir to try and find where I fit. Eventually I found the alto section. I struggled for weeks to remember the words and to try and learn how to use my voice again. Instinctively I knew how important it was for me. New friends with strong, clear voices stood around me and gradually I found my way - thank you Laurie...

ReBuilding yourself is a journey - actually more like a pilgrimage... So why not build it into something you enjoy and love? Singing is fabulous exercise - it challenges you and your brain in so many different ways. I can imagine hundreds of tiny, threadlike new pathways being formed in my brain every time I open my mouth!